Ukraine’s Security Role in East-Central Europe

The structure of international relations is shaped these days by two opposing tendencies that manifest themselves on both the global and regional levels. The first is disintegration and decentralization of the totalitarian system that existed in Eastern Europe and Asia in Cold War times. As a result of this tendency, a number of multi-ethnic states of the former socialist camp instantly fell apart, and many new states, mostly mono-ethnic, emerged in the place of each of them. This change has brought immense and very fast changes in the map of Eurasia, and recent events in the Caucasus and former Yugoslavia indicate that the outlines of this new map have not yet been completed.